calabria

"we are on a pilgrimage to the summit crater of mount etna to pray for world peace" we told the train ticket inspector.  it was a priest who gave us a lift for twenty eight kilometres to the high car park.  the priest said:  why are you going precisely to the crater of mount etna to pray?  fabrizio gave the response:  "we will be closer to God there, insomma, away from the city and civilisation's manipulation of nature"   it was a just response.   we spent that afternoon in an little old crater dozing in the sun and then gazing up to the peaked summit from which rose a steady stream of white smoke. 

the next day we set off at first light and climbed to the summit.  it was a strange place.  looking into the depths of the crater all that could be seen was smoke rising fast, carried by the warm air. a smell of sulphur in the air, making us breath through the sleeves of our jackets.  smoke rising from the very rocks.  i suggested not completely seriously that we play chess on the crater edge, but all fabri wanted was to descend.  it was a marvellous place, but also a strange place.  i asked fabri:  "how does one pray for world peace?"   can one's thoughts really affect external events?
our actions affect the world outside of us more than our thoughts, i thought.
first thought, then action
we said: "maybe what prayer transforms most is the self" and it seemed just.

i like to be alive.
sometimes it feels like i am standing on the edge of a big exciting precipice; the future is a wide wide open space.  i have no idea what will happen there, and the thought thrills me.

pepe is old now and sighs at the midday table and says "ahhh, life is nothing but sweat and more sweat"

i am perturbed by this.  i drink the good wine and eat the good cheese and the good bread they eat every day and try to summarise "so, your life is lacking joy...?"
pepe gives a resigned clear affirmative nod. 
i have observed pepe fixing the tractor or killing a goat and skinning it with the same slow deliberate resigned manner.   i can't figure out his experience of life, his malcontent.

i had been thinking: life is strange
also: it is strange to be a person
but francesca said:  life is magic
that was also the message graffitied onto the little road that rose up to the temple where i slept in terracina:
LA
VITA
E
UNA
MAGIA

otherwise, almost all the graffıti in italy is concerning the experience of being in love.  everywhere, on park benches or on any available city wall space, there are messages spray-painted: ''i will love you forever'', ''you are the light of my life'', ''my life is nothing without you''.
it is very endearing.

luca sbaglia has written a little book of poetry, the first page of which reads:

Sono uno scrittore
Ho 27 anni
Non compiuti,
E pratico da 8.
Poche persone
Mi hanno letto, e
Non ho mai
Guadagnato
1 euro
Con la mia
Roba

although much of the content of his poetry displays a disenchantment with society and the difficulties of fitting into this modern world and finding meaning therein, in spite of that negative slant i like the sound of the words.  luca explained to me that the sound of the words is just as important, if not more important, than their meaning.  the musicality of the italian language is ideal for the creation of sound poetry.  
there is always an emphatic stress on one given syllabol in each word; the other syllabols have their muted musical cadence.   there are solely five vowel sounds, round and resounding, to play with
a
e
i
o
u

each vowel sound ripe for receiving an emphatic stress
so much meaning is communicated through the tone of the voice.
mamma mia could just be mamma mia, but when it comes mAmma mIa with a humungous protracted emphatic A, the meaning of the meaning is doubled or trebled.

it is understandabe why most italians love to speak so much, with a language like theirs.  does every italian know that they are making music every time they open their mouths?


francesca's voice is so soft and full of peace when she sings inside the hollow huge chestnut tree in Sila national park where we huddle as it rains outside:

dolce sentire come nel mio cuore
ora umilmente sta nascendo amore
dolce capire che non son piu solo
ma che son parte di una immensa vita

ci ha dato il cielo e le chiare stelle
fratello sole e sorella luna
la madre terra con frutti, pratti e fiori
il fuoco e il vento, l'aria e l'acqua pura.

(sweet feeling in my heart
now humbly love is being born
sweet knowing that i am no longer alone
but i am a part of an immense life

the sky has been given us, and the clear stars
brother sun and sister moon
the mother earth with fruits, meadows and flowers
the fire and the wind, the air and the pure water)

francesca says that san francesco is about the only saint she really likes.  fabri also sometimes says that we are like the disciples of san francesco, who slept outside and walked for days on end and gave sermons to the birds.

we said that reading luca's poetry that night, the same as eating Rossella's goat's cheese at any moment, increased our level of consciousness - the same also as being in the mountains.

we said: "ci ha aumentato la nostra consapevolezza"

every word i say i want it to be the truth, nothing but the truth.
i mean every word of it

there is a flame of Truth that flickers within us
flashing unmistakably clearly
we know everything
everything - at least everything that can be known by us - is known by us

the poetic consciousness of every moment
la bellezza fiammeggiante di ogni momento

live in the truth.
la via la vita la verità - they are all One

writing is important
writing is giving form to our thoughts
a manifesto.
thinking is giving a message to God
a response to the life-giving Creator,
who has created us given us life.

an old man walks along the railway platform
slightly tubby
with a stripy t-shirt
where is he going?

- to buy the newspaper (fabrizio)
- to greet his wife (me)
- to look at the sea (fab)


il pensiero, minchia   (fabri)
(thought . . . wow)


la bellezza del cielo
un cielo bello
a yellow bello cielo

today, sitting at a quiet square in Locri, i realised that doing a wheelie on your bmx is a profoundly youthful action.




i am learning all about people.  i can now understand something of the reaction of the youths in the street when i cycled through the village with no t-shirt a year ago.  their reaction bewildered me then.  they drove their moped alongside me and gave me arm gestures of bewilderment, with an intense questioning look of incomprehension and also offense in their eyes.
now, walking along the country road outside pepe and rossella's farm with no t-shirt or shoes, i receive more or less the same response; as the youths speed past they deliver me a string of invective.  i did not understand one word of their calabrese dialect, but i knew that it was invective from the tone of the voice.   now i listen to rosella's explanation.  i begin to understand the strong compulsion which seizes members of society and compels them to conform - do not stand out at all from the crowd.
a week later i was waiting for the train in bovalino's little station when the youths asked me questions: "are you the person who was walking along the road to africo vecchio without shoes or t-shirt?"  then followed a string of questions:  what do you work as? are you married?  do you go to the mountains in those boots? why do your socks have different colours? what do you eat? when was the last time you had a shower? (two years ago? someone suggested)

here also there is the mafia. (couple of weeks ago a social centre was burned to the ground in reggio calabria.  the assumed motive: members of the mafia wished to construct another building on the site)
who you do not know you do not trust.
people.    mamma mia, you have to respect them.
however, the inscrutability of people...

fabri and i had gone to the beach at brancaleone to swim out to the rocks through the crystaline water then dry off in the sun.   we passed by the bar for a beer on the way back and there the flowers in our hair reminded roberto of the picking-off-the-petals rhyme "mi ama, non m'ama, she loves me, she loves me not" he took great pleasure in picking off the petals.  a big throaty belly laugh, his.   roberto has been drinking. he buys us beers.  he looks at me in the eyes.  he calls me furbo, which i think means something like sly and cunning.  i think he calls me that because i do not say things with the same spontaneous enthusiasm, i mostly observe him, trying to work out who he is.  he offers us more beer.  he offers to takes us out in his fishing boat the next morning.   after a while i want to be in the sun again.  i suggest to him that we go sit outside.  there, across the table he pierces me with his fierce brown eyes and says repeatedly, insistantly: "ma che cazzo vuoi?"  he is sure that i want something.  i say "i do not want anything.  i am completely happy to sit here in the sun.  i want no thing"

he does not believe me. he calls me furbo.

people.

i say to fabri afterwards "i think roberto wanted to buy our friendship with beer"



when i was first coming down to calabria by train there was a silent man sitting on the floor across from me, looking out the window with eyes of infinite tiredness.  when i found out that he spoke no italian, we spoke in english and he told me that he was fleeing from the war in afghanistan.  he had crossed with no passport in a boat by night from greece three nights ago.  slept in the park in rome.   he was tired in the extreme, but livened up during the course of our confabulation.  all he wanted was a safe place to sleep and eat food and be alive.  i wrote out a phrase asking for directions for the refugee centre he was sure he could find in sicilia at the end of the line.  he asked me what scotland was like and all i could respond was "it is a safe place", wondering why i felt compelled to leave that safe place and go towards unsafe countries like his.